Page 2 of Stars Above the Never Sea (The Last Faeyte #1)

There were so many faeytes here. All of them had come, and pride pushed her shoulders back, straightened her spine as she walked.

Even Aylina, their librarian and scribe, had left her cavernous library of books and scrolls within the Sanctum to attend, although a smudge of ink still dusted the very end of her button nose.

She caught the girl’s eye and nodded, placing a hand over her heart with stained fingers.

Others echoed the movement. Faces turned to her as she moved through the crowd. They offered small smiles and whispered blessings, and each one made her heart swell with pride as she moved toward the dais.

The Maiden, still youthful with her dark braided hair and a soft smile despite her decades of life, beckoned her closer.

Beside her on the dais sat an empty, carved wooden chair, and the girl wondered what had the Mother moving away from the ceremony and not toward it.

On the Maiden’s other side, the Crone, her black eyes glassy with age and her skin lined with the wisdom of a hundred years, nodded in greeting.

She couldn’t help pausing, glancing over her shoulder.

Hundreds of faces looked back at her. Each of them familiar in a way that could only be achieved over a lifetime.

Calista, who had spent weeks patiently teaching her the basics of healing, in the hope that she might receive it as her Calling. The girl had followed at her heels as she moved around the infirmary, working with the inritus and the Caelumnai who came to Asteria for help from Hala’s priestesses.

Gifted hands , they had whispered in awe as Calista passed by them. Hala’s hands.

Deva, wearing a furrow between her sleek dark brows but smiling nonetheless, who oversaw the gardens at the back of the temple.

A pair of shears, lethally sharp and edged in fresh-looking wet dirt, still poked from the pocket of her cloak.

The girl still remembered the way Deva’s eyebrows had twitched after a full morning spent planting, only to find the seeds still in the pocket of the girl’s apron.

The girl was not destined for the earth.

That much had been clear, but Deva had still been patient in her teaching, had still invited her back weeks later to see the green sprouts of new life rising from the ground, had placed a hand on her shoulder in quiet pride and told the girl to look at what she had created.

Every face brought a memory, and the girl swallowed as she turned back to the Maiden. The Maiden’s eyes softened with understanding. “Hala’s blessing on you today, little sister. No longer a child.”

The girl quickly touched her thumb and index finger against her forehead, sketching out the shape of a clumsy crescent moon. “And to you, Maiden.”

“Not yet,” the Crone muttered, her tone laced with the wisdom of the years that Hala had gifted her. The solid end of her wooden cane thumped into the stone floor. “Not yet.”

Still, there was no sign of the Mother.

The tension in the room grew. Enough that the girl could feel it, could almost taste it on her tongue. “Is…is there a delay, Maiden?”

It was bold to ask such a question at all. But then, this was her final day of childhood. It had taken her sixteen years to reach this point, always willing time to go faster.

Perhaps Hala was punishing her for her doubts. She had wished for extra time, back in the hallway.

The Maiden smiled again. But her hands, the girl noticed, were gripping the arms of her seat tightly, the already pale knuckles bleached unnaturally white. “Are you frightened, little faeyte?”

The girl frowned at that. Slowly, she shook her head.

And then she thought about it once more, and nodded.

“Good.” The word was low, and unexpectedly fierce, and the girl glanced up, startled.

She looked into the Maiden’s eyes, and the Maiden stared back.

“Own your fear. Hold onto it. But do not let it own you. Take hold of it, and embrace it. Remember that darkness is only the absence of light, and you are made of light itself.”

There were no stars in her eyes at all today, the girl noticed. Only an endless darkness, as if light had been abruptly snuffed out, a curtain drawn.

It was a strange thing to say, the girl thought. Unease stirred again in her gut.

Perhaps it was a part of the ceremony. What did she know?

“Remember that you are always our sister.” When the Maiden spoke again, there was a tremble in her words. “Do not forget.”

The crowd was stirring. She could see Nyx, and Celeste, their faces pale as they moved toward her with uncommon haste.

In the distance, a bell began to toll.

“They are here.” Nyx did not speak to the girl. She faced the Maiden, her head bowed. And her hands—those hands that had always been so steady now trembled so badly that the girl slipped her hand into them and squeezed tightly.

“And we must be ready.” The Maiden looked once more at the girl, and in that moment, she looked remarkably like the Mother had, with her gaze heavy and sad. “Even if we wish we had more time.”

When the Maiden rose, she hesitated before the girl. A hand came to rest on her shoulder in a gentle caress. “Remember my words. Do not forget who you are.”

She didn’t understand.

The girl turned between them in confusion, looking at Nyx and Celeste. “What’s happening?”

But they did not answer her. Celeste startled her by pulling her close and squeezing her tightly, the way that she had only once, when the girl had roused from the clutches of a fever they thought would see her return to Hala as a child of just seven winters.

But the girl had sixteen winters now. An adult—or she would be. She slid up her hand, her fingers brushing the tear from her sister’s cheek. Another fell that her sister did not try to hide, and the girl’s throat tightened to the point of pain. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Because something was very, very wrong.

That bell—she knew that bell, of course.

It was the bell in the harbor, used in ceremony and in celebration.

To welcome the visitors who came to Asteria for learning, or for healing.

It was a point of pride in the town to train as a bellringer for Asteria, to learn to wield the enormous, metal bells in the belltower to send urgent messages up to Hala’s temple.

But she didn’t know this message.

For the bells rang with desperation , the peals harsh and continuous and without rhythm.

Only to stop, abrupt and sudden.

The girl looked at Nyx for answers. She suddenly felt—unsteady, perhaps. As though the world was shifting beneath her feet. “Nyx?”

Nyx blinked rapidly, before she threw her arms around the girl as Celeste had. “We have to go. Come now.”

The girl took a step back, yanking herself free. “What are you talking about? That’s not part of the Ascension—,”

“There will be no Ascension today,” Nyx breathed. There was sorrow there—so much sorrow that the girl felt the bottom drop from her stomach. “The Caelumnai are here.”

She didn’t understand the words that had Nyx—her Nyx, so steady, so elegant—ashen and trembling. “So? They come here all the time—,”

They came for healing, for education, for exploration.

And there had been more and more these past few months.

The town was full to bursting with Travelers.

And with them came the whispers. Whispers that their own land was dying, that their maegis had pulled every bit of life from the ground and there was nothing left.

That their people were beginning to starve.

She had thought it nothing more than a terrible story.

Maegis did not act like that—it never had.

The faeyte’s maegis did not steal from the ground, but supported it.

Asteria’s land was lush and plentiful, helped along by Deva and Milah, who had received an affinity to influence animals as part of her Calling.

The Travelers had always liked to tell stories, had offered them in exchange for shelter and food, and so did the inritus in the town as they gathered around the hearth in the square each night, though they lacked the unusual gifts possessed by those with Traveler maegis.

The girl had always loved those stories.

She had crept out of the temple more than once to listen at the shadowed edges of the crowd, a bowl of hot soup nudged into her hands by the elders who saw her and only smiled.

They would press their thumb and their index finger together before touching their forehead, and the girl had always returned the gesture with pride, her shoulders straightening and feeling a little taller at the respect they offered before sneaking back to the temple to receive a tongue-lashing from Nyx for her tardiness.

“Not this time.” Celeste gripped her shoulders tightly, shaking the girl. “You must listen to me now. They do not come for aid. They come for everything .”

The girl blinked. And very faintly, through the open air above her head, high above the arches, she heard something.

She had never heard such noise. Harsh, and high, and continuous, a harrowing, awful song that grew louder, twining with the sound of her own heartbeat suddenly echoing in her ears.

Screaming. Endless waves, ebbs and flows of cries from hundreds of throats. She didn’t know the town could make such a noise, didn’t know how to understand the sound that reached her.

She had heard pain in the infirmary. Knew what that sounded like. But she had never heard pain like this.

Nyx pressed their foreheads together, her voice urgent. “It had to be this way. Do not hate us, Selene. And…gods, do not forget us.”

Selene.

The girl frowned. “That is not—,”

She had no name. Not until Hala gifted it, not until the girl had climbed the steps to the Sanctum and lifted her face to the crescent moon.

“ I name you.” Nyx swallowed. “We name you, little sister. Selene Amaris.”

Selene Amaris.